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Dragon sex: how romantasy became a billion-dollar book genre · The Front

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  Speaker 1: In the Lord of the Rings it was Orlando Bloom
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  Speaker 1: as the hot Elf.
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  Speaker 2: Oh okay.
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  Speaker 1: And then in the cinema adaptation of the line The
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  Speaker 1: Witch and the Wardrobe, it was James McAvoy as mister Tumnus.
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  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he was the hot kind of hot hot
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  Speaker 1: hot forwn.
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  Speaker 2: Hot thornn Thank you, Jasper.
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  Speaker 1: From The Australian. This is the weekend edition of The Front.
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  Speaker 1: I'm Claire Harvey. There's a genre of books that's projected
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  Speaker 1: to rake in around a billion Australian dollars this year alone.
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  Speaker 1: Can you guess what the formula is. Well, it's one
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  Speaker 1: part romance, one part fantasy. Some call it very smart.
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  Speaker 1: We've brought in our literary editor, Carolyn Overington to help
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  Speaker 1: understand this wild phenomenon where elves, dragons and fairies get nasty.
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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Romanticy. They call it doom scrolling for a reason.
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  Speaker 2: Boom, explosive press an the place of the planet.
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  Speaker 1: It's my dress either right now, you're good, you got nice?
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: This is so embarrassing, So on the Hawk Tour podcast,
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: this is what I can under the spell of your feed.
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  Speaker 1: And no one in their right mind are playing footies
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  Speaker 1: with these feet. For some people, the antidote to doom
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  Speaker 1: scrolling sounds like this, close your eye.
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  Speaker 2: Three.
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  Speaker 1: To others, it sounds like this, wish to be alone.
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  Speaker 2: Claudius retreated to a wing of the palace known as
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  Speaker 2: the Hermaeum.
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  Speaker 1: But for a growing number, specifically women, it sounds like this.
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  Speaker 3: I never knew Allyrians were such sensitive babies, I said,
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  Speaker 3: sliding another finger down the inside of his wing. Something
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  Speaker 3: hard pushed against my behind, and I went tart and
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  Speaker 3: loose all at once. I stroked his wing again, two
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  Speaker 3: fingers now, and he twitched against my backside in time
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  Speaker 3: with the caress.
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  Speaker 1: Welcome to the fantastical land of romanticy swords, secrets, and spice.
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  Speaker 1: Spice in this context obviously means sex, and the more
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  Speaker 1: sex there is, the spicier the raid. Only. The sex
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  Speaker 1: in romanticy novels is often between a woman and an
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  Speaker 1: attractive elf, all between fairies, which has given the genre
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  Speaker 1: another name fairy smart and women can't get enough.
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  Speaker 2: By fucking lover. I remember reading it like thus, so
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  Speaker 2: steem me, these are the.
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  Speaker 1: Books that I would give my left arm to read
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  Speaker 1: again for the first time. And that's how I screamed.
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  Speaker 2: I screamed when these were announced.
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  Speaker 1: I am so so excited.
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  Speaker 2: To believe fairy smart or romanticy or elf pawn or
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  Speaker 2: whatever you'd like to call it is basically romance and
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  Speaker 2: fantasy melded together. We saw it come to the fore
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  Speaker 2: in about twenty twenty, and I think that's no coincidence
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  Speaker 2: because it was COVID and these are escapist fantasies. So
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  Speaker 2: in the old days, you you might read a bit
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  Speaker 2: of a romance novel, but you didn't need it to
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  Speaker 2: be particularly spicy. But with these books, particularly when you're
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  Speaker 2: reading the reviews, you might see a lot of little
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  Speaker 2: chili emojis, and if you get two or three chilly emojis,
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  Speaker 2: it means they're really hot, So the writer is not
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  Speaker 2: shying away from the idea that they're is sex in
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  Speaker 2: these books, even though the characters are dragons and ELFs
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  Speaker 2: and vampires and wear wolves, so it does take a
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  Speaker 2: little stretch of the imagination. But we are talking about
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  Speaker 2: sort of interspecies sexual congress.
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  Speaker 1: And is it mainly heterosexual interspecies sexual congress, like is
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  Speaker 1: this girl dragon on girl or is it male and female?
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  Speaker 1: Not exclusively, because of course, as we know millennials in particular,
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  Speaker 1: who are the biggest readers of these books, because we're
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  Speaker 1: looking at women between the ages of about sixteen and
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  Speaker 1: thirty five. Don't make judgments about the kind of people.
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  Speaker 1: You fall in love with a person, you don't fall
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  Speaker 1: in love with the gender. And many of these people
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  Speaker 1: are involved in the kind of groups and environments where cosplay,
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  Speaker 1: so furries people dressing up as cats or identifying as
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  Speaker 1: trees is not as unusual to them as it is
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  Speaker 1: to perhaps you and I are a little bit older
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  Speaker 1: where generation next, right, so we sort of think the
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  Speaker 1: idea that you might dress up in a furry costume
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  Speaker 1: for intimacy somewhat unusual.
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  Speaker 2: Although maybe not. I don't know what you're doing outside
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  Speaker 2: the front possible, so you had to take off your
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  Speaker 2: large head piece in order. But youngsters don't find that
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  Speaker 2: as unusual as we perhaps did, And so it's not
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  Speaker 2: unusual to find yourself perhaps lusting after a dragon. Saying
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  Speaker 2: that a lot of what happens in these worlds because
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  Speaker 2: they are all different kinds of world A key part
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  Speaker 2: of Romanticy is world building. So it's an unusual world.
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  Speaker 2: It's not Planet Earth. It tends to have a heroine
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  Speaker 2: who is a little bit. She's had some trauma in
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  Speaker 2: her life. She's all either lost somebody very important to her,
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  Speaker 2: or she has been abused in some way. But she's
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  Speaker 2: not a victim. She's brave. She has a quiver full
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  Speaker 2: of arrows. She rides her own dragon. She's going forth
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  Speaker 2: into the universe, into this world that's been created to
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  Speaker 2: exact revenge, but also save the planet. And so she
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  Speaker 2: might fall in love with someone, but she's not a
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  Speaker 2: victim of that romance. She's not someone who's having her
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  Speaker 2: bodice torn open. She has agency. You know, she's saving
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  Speaker 2: the world, but she's also owning her own sexuality and
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  Speaker 2: her own desires. They're very strong female characters, and that's
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  Speaker 2: what I think women love about them.
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  Speaker 1: If we put Romanticy on a family tree and then
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  Speaker 1: traced it back according to its origins. On one side,
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  Speaker 1: we have the fantasy part, so let's just trace that back.
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  Speaker 2: The idea of.
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  Speaker 1: A hot elf or a hot dwarf, I would suggest
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  Speaker 1: comes from maybe the Hobbit the Lord of the Rings.
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  Speaker 1: Orlando Bloom very famously was the hot elf legal ass
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  Speaker 1: in Lord of the Rings. In me film meditation of
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  Speaker 1: the Hobbit. Peter Jackson added a storyline with a hot
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  Speaker 1: female el falling in love with a very handsome dwarf.
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  Speaker 1: That was Tarry and killy, So is that where this
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  Speaker 1: comes from.
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  Speaker 2: It's not just Lord of the Rings, but also C. S. Lewis.
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  Speaker 2: It's the Lion, the Witch in the Wardrobe. It's a
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  Speaker 2: little bit of Harry Potter. It's a little bit Beauty
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  Speaker 2: and the Beast, because in Beauty and the Beast there
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  Speaker 2: was a monster, right, and she kind of fell in
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  Speaker 2: love with him.
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  Speaker 3: Now, hold still, this might sting a little. By the way,
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  Speaker 3: thank you for saving my life.
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  Speaker 2: That's a story that's many, many years older than these
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  Speaker 2: romanticy tales. What the critics of this particular genre say
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  Speaker 2: is that if you were reading C. S. Lewis The Lion,
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  Speaker 2: the Witch in the Wardrobe, what you are actually reading
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  Speaker 2: is a biblical story. It has important lessons about morality
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  Speaker 2: and meaning and purpose in life. And they worry that
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  Speaker 2: with romanticy it's all become about the hot dwarf. You know,
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  Speaker 2: how hot is your dragon? C. S. Lewis was always
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  Speaker 2: a gateway for children. If you read the line the
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  Speaker 2: Witch and the Wardrobe, then you might open a door
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  Speaker 2: into serious literature and this was the point of reading
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  Speaker 2: in childhood. And what they worry about is that young
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  Speaker 2: women who are in romanticy never leave that room. You
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  Speaker 2: know they love these worlds and we know they do.
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  Speaker 2: The numbers don't lie. Sarah J. Mask has sold forty
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  Speaker 2: million copies of what's known as the Akatar series. That's
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  Speaker 2: a crown of Thorns and roses and there's now sixteen books.
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  Speaker 1: I've read seven chapters of this book and I don't
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  Speaker 1: want to target and bought the rest of the series.
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  Speaker 2: But the queen at the moment is Rebecca Yarras. I
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  Speaker 2: feel extra special this month because I got a Rebecca
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  Speaker 2: yarrols arc. So it started with Fourth Wing and then
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  Speaker 2: Iron Flame and now we have the ok Storm. The
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  Speaker 2: Onng Storm, which is published by Hashet here in Australia,
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  Speaker 2: was the fastest selling book of the week by a
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  Speaker 2: country mile.
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  Speaker 1: If anyone lives on the Wantington Peninsula. Kmart Hastings got
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  Speaker 1: their stock in today best of like everyone.
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  Speaker 2: They sold one hundred and thirty three thousand copies within
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  Speaker 2: days of hitting the market. One in one hundred Australian
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  Speaker 2: households has a Rebecca Yaris book. Now they're both foreign
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  Speaker 2: writers or not non Australian writers, but we actually have
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  Speaker 2: an Australian superstar now. Her name is Sarah A. Parker.
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  Speaker 2: She lives in Queensland and her book is called When
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  Speaker 2: the Moon Hatched.
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  Speaker 1: On the Other Side of the Family Tree. There's the
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  Speaker 1: kinds of writing that we expect in the romance genre
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  Speaker 1: and any other genre about sex. So once upon a time,
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  Speaker 1: the traditional Harlequin or Mills and Boon novels were quite
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  Speaker 1: coy about the actual sex. There was a lot of love,
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  Speaker 1: but also a lot of doors closing on the sexual
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  Speaker 1: scene and then the couple waking up in each other's
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  Speaker 1: arms the next morning. Book and in my wild Fifty
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  Speaker 1: Shades of Gray and the three hundred and sixty five
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  Speaker 1: Days books kind of changed that, didn't they.
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  Speaker 2: You're absolutely right. Fifty Shades of Gray smashed that, although
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  Speaker 2: older readers will say it was smashed by a story
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  Speaker 2: of Oh, which came out many years before Fifty Shades
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  Speaker 2: of Gray. When Fifty Shades of Gray first started as
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  Speaker 2: fan fiction, so being published on the internet and you
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  Speaker 2: could read it for free, there was doubt among publishers
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  Speaker 2: that women would want to be seen reading a book
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  Speaker 2: that was known to contain vivid sex scenes and satomasochism,
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  Speaker 2: but women bought it, and so you're right. In these
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  Speaker 2: romanticy books they do not shy away from the sex.
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  Speaker 2: Although I am told and I didn't know this that
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  Speaker 2: apparently when they refer to the dragon's wings span, they're
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  Speaker 2: not necessarily talking about the wigspan. So if you have
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  Speaker 2: a dragon with a large wingspan, apparently that means something else.
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  Speaker 3: All in time.
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  Speaker 1: So it's good to know. Coming up, Caroline on the
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  Speaker 1: impact romantic is having on readers and the book market.
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  Speaker 1: You talked a little bit before about the idea that
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  Speaker 1: some readers might never leave this romanticy genre, that they
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  Speaker 1: love it so much that this is where they remain,
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  Speaker 1: they don't progress to other types of reading. Is that
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  Speaker 1: part of what's changed in the book trade that once
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  Speaker 1: upon a time maybe we could divide serious readers who
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  Speaker 1: buy literary fiction where there isn't always a happy ending,
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  Speaker 1: and then there are romance readers who buy romances, and
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  Speaker 1: then other people who buy kind of airport novels. It's
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  Speaker 1: all very clearly delineated. Is all that merging now or not?
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  Speaker 2: We have more readers than we've ever had, that's for sure.
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  Speaker 2: There are more books being sold now than have ever
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  Speaker 2: been sold in history, kind of books that we traditionally
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  Speaker 2: would have regarded as serious literature. So in Australia, for example,
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  Speaker 2: literary fiction is in dire straits. If you are trying
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  Speaker 2: to sell a book that you might classify as literary fiction,
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  Speaker 2: you are going to have to work incredibly hard to
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  Speaker 2: find readers, whereas Romanticy, on the the other hand, if
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  Speaker 2: you go into a Demics bookshop, that aisle is going
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  Speaker 2: to be absolutely packed. Now there will be people who
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  Speaker 2: worry about this, They're worried about whether or not people
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  Speaker 2: are reading. Seriously. Myself, I am not worried because, firstly,
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  Speaker 2: these books are not bad, they're extremely entertaining. The idea
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  Speaker 2: of encouraging people to read is such a good idea,
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  Speaker 2: particularly because we know reading is very good for you.
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  Speaker 2: It's good for depression, it's good for loneliness, it's good
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  Speaker 2: for your curiosity, it's good for your kids. It's good
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  Speaker 2: to get away from your screens, it's good to stop
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  Speaker 2: you from scrolling. So why should we be worried about
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  Speaker 2: what people are reading? As long as they are it
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  Speaker 2: exercises parts of your brain that in the digital world
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  Speaker 2: are being left dormant. It's so nice to pick up
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  Speaker 2: a book and get lost and just get lost in
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  Speaker 2: that amazing world. I think some literary critics can be
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  Speaker 2: a little bit snobbish about romanticy books because they think
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  Speaker 2: they're not serious. But I think that meeting the needs
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  Speaker 2: of readers is not a bad thing for a book
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  Speaker 2: to be doing.
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  Speaker 1: Does literary fiction have a future then, or does it
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  Speaker 1: retreat to becoming something like chamber music, which once was
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  Speaker 1: wildly popular, of course, but now basically needs to be
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  Speaker 1: subsidized it doesn't have a viable commercial existence.
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  Speaker 2: Well, literary fiction doesn't have a viable commercial existence in Australia,
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  Speaker 2: and I would argue never has. It's extremely difficult to
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  Speaker 2: make money if that is the kind of book that
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  Speaker 2: you're writing. If you are a Lee Child and you're
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: writing a Jack Reacher style book, or you're a James Patterson,
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  Speaker 2: you can very easily make a living. But that's not
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  Speaker 2: true of literary fictions as been subsidized by the government,
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: and that's why we have the Australian Council now called
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: the Creative Australia to try to support writers to tell
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  Speaker 2: Australian stories. You will occasionally get breakout novels like Trent
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  Speaker 2: Dalton's and they sell, and they become stage plays and
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  Speaker 2: they become Netflix series and of course he's making a living.
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  Speaker 2: But they're unicorns. Most people can expect to sell somewhere
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  Speaker 2: between eight hundred and two thousand copies. Can you make
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  Speaker 2: a living? No, absolutely not. Of course you can't. And
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  Speaker 2: so then becomes a question of do we want to
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  Speaker 2: keep people writing Australian stories, And I would argue that
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  Speaker 2: we do. We still need Australian stories to be told,
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  Speaker 2: even if you can't always find a large audience. It's
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  Speaker 2: a small but discerning audience, Claire.
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  Speaker 1: So they need to be having some Bunyip in there.
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  Speaker 2: That's well. Interestingly, Australian Gothic, which I think would be
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  Speaker 2: a subset of Romantcy, has always been very popular. So
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  Speaker 2: for example, the Bunyip is not a bad example. And
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  Speaker 2: another one would be Picnic at Hanging Rock, which is
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  Speaker 2: celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year. That is definitely a
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  Speaker 2: Gothic tale. It isn't a romanticy, but it definitely has
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: those feelings of being in a strange world. Forces at
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  Speaker 2: play that we don't really understand now this year, if
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: you're interested in that book, you can go out. You
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  Speaker 2: can see a stage play. There's a movie on the way.
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  Speaker 2: There's a biography of the author, Joan Lindsay on the shelves.
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  Speaker 2: At the moment. There's a reissue of the book itself.
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  Speaker 2: So things do come in waves.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: Caroline Everington is The Australian's literary editor. You can read
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: Caroline's reviews and to interviews with the world's leading authors,
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: plus all the big news from the world of books
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: on Saturdays in our review section and at the Australian
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: dot com dot a u slash review anytime. Thanks for
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: joining us this week on the front. Our team is
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: Jasper League, Kristin Amiot, Leat, Sammaglue, Tiffany Dimak, Joshua Burton,
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: Stephanie Coombs and me Claire Harvey.